Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.